Well it’s Christmas Day and it’s all winding down here. It’s been as fun a day as ever, I hope it has been a good day for you too.
Unfortunately I was awoken at 2am this morning, not because of the Ghost of Christmas Past, he came at 1, no it was because I was in a great deal of discomfort. This abdominal pain decided to keep me awake for a while, which annoyed the hell out of me! I mean, c’mon of all days to get ill it chooses Christmas Day? Thanks a lot!
Anyway, I did manage to get some sleep before I got out of bed in the morning. But I’ve spent the majority of the day with it, how fun. It’s not really the pain that bothered me really, I’m more than used to it, it’s just the timing of it. You spend all month looking forward to Christmas and then when it comes, you’re ill. Brilliant.
So after Christmas Dinner, which I did manage to enjoy, I decided to admit defeat and head to bed for a while. Whilst lying in bed, it got me thinking about how annoyed I was at missing out on Christmas thanks to illness. But after a while I started thinking about all those people in the world who don’t even have the luxury of being with their family and friends on Christmas Day.
Those people who spend Christmas alone, people without family, people stuck in a hospital bed, working or serving their country overseas. These are the people I thought of whilst I was lying there in pain. It dawned on me at that moment just how fortunate I am to be home for Christmas, some people don’t even get that luxury.
The people I thought of most were the soldiers out serving their nation. Unfortunately war doesn’t stop for Christmas, it would be good if it did, but it doesn’t. Today, the Queen didn’t mention the troops in her speech, which I felt was a bit disappointing, instead she opted for a message about sport and togetherness in communities. One of the reasons we can even celebrate Christmas is because of the bravery of the servicemen and women, some of whom are stuck in a war zone on the 25th.
Barack Obama and his wife Michelle paid tribute to the American troops spending Christmas overseas:
“Today, we’re also thinking of those who can’t be home for the holidays, especially all our courageous countrymen serving overseas. They’ve been everything we’ve asked them to be, and even as we speak, many are fighting halfway around the globe, in hopes that someday, our children and grandchildren won’t have to”
A poignant and fitting message I thought, and it would have been nice if someone from Britain would have said something like that for our troops. I haven’t seen a mention of them today. I haven’t seen David Cameron all day either, he’s probably spending Christmas with his family, which is fair enough, but he could have at least recorded something. I just feel as a nation we’re starting to become a little too selfish when it comes to Christmas, and you can’t get much more oxymoronic than that.
All in all today has been a great Christmas, even if I was ill for it. Being unwell made me realise how lucky I am and that there are people out there in far worse situations than I am. It was quite a humbling realisation as I’d spent most of the day being irritated at the fact I was poorly and that Amazon hadn’t delivered my stuff. We take so much for granted at Christmas and in the end I’m just happy spending it at home with the ones I love.
Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
I hope you’ve had a great Christmas yourself, and here’s hoping those who aren’t as fortunate as me today, will be with their loved ones sooner rather than later.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling this week. Around my local area, don’t get too excited. So because of this I bought myself a weekly bus pass, meaning I could use the bus an unlimited amount of time. Sounds great, only it isn’t.
I needed to head into the city on Tuesday and instead of getting the train like I would normally do, I decided to get some use out of the weekly bus ticket. I cannot stress this enough: it’s one of the worst decisions I have made this year. And this is a man who willingly watched the Manchester Derby last night. Yep, it was that bad.
Buses, it’s fair to say they’re my least favourite method of transport. The only thing lower would probably be mouse, but at least I could make reference to Uncle Buck. Heck, I’d rather paraglide from place to place. Do the weekly shop on a unicycle. As long as it’s not a bus I couldn’t care less.
I mean, come on, they’re slow, they’re no longer cheap, they have all the charm of an abattoir and the smell isn’t far off that either. So there I am, sat inside what can only be described as a McDonald’s bathroom on wheels, only with slightly worse hygiene, and obviously I instantly start regretting the decision.
Naturally I start to look around for something to pass the time. Adverts, fantastic! One very condescending piece from the nhs, another from what looks like the police, and one that says “Some people are gay. Get over it.” Good point advertisement, well made. Okay, that took 14 seconds, crap I am so screwed.
And then I saw it. The most glorious thing introduced to public transport since seats. It sat there, one seat from me. The Metro! As soon as I saw it I grabbed it, thank you Lord! Now, the Metro is hardly the best and mightiest journalism you’ll find this side of the equator; their stories are usually a couple of days old, and sometimes they don’t have the whole football result because it went into extra time, which I find hilarious, but when you’re sat on a bus or train and your ipod just won’t cut it anymore, it’s as good as the freaking New York Times.
So I’m flicking through the paper, and there’s nothing really to shout about in the news, a bloody great big advert from the Kinect (fed up of that yet?), a piece on some crap boy band called One Direction, and then I saw a headline that caught my eye.
“Don‘t wear a poppy, shop worker told.”
Great, as if I’m not depressed enough sat on this bus with a Oscar the Grouch, now I see a story like this. The best thing to do would be to just turn the page and not read on. But annoyingly I did.
The story is about a shop worker, Harriet Phipps who was told by her manager that she could not wear her poppy as “it’s not uniform or company policy.” Of course she ignored this rule and was warned again about the matter the next time she did it. Harriet said she was disgusted, and frankly, so am I. It really annoys me when companies do this to people. Like when British Airways told a check-in worker she couldn’t wear a cross showing her faith. I hate it when companies literally say: “we don’t want you as a person to work for us, we want a robot, we’ll then paint the robot as we see fit and programme it to do our bidding.”
These are real people, who are the lifeblood of these companies, and they get treated with absolute disrespect. The shop Harriet Phipps works for? Hollister. Owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. Yes, the same Abercrombie & Fitch who told a shop worker she had to work in the back because she didn’t fit ‘the look’ of their store. Why didn’t she fit ‘the look’? She had a prosthetic limb.
But the main issue that keeps on cropping up in recent years is the whole poppy debate and this isn’t the only story that’s cropped up this week. Jon Snow has been in the news again, he won’t wear one on air but does wear one privately. And everyone’s up in arms about it. But then again people have been complaining about Andrew Marr wearing one too early. We do love a good moan here in Britain. If everyone was given a £2000 tax-rebate we’d still moan that we had to walk to the Post Office to collect it.
Snow calls the backlash ’poppy fascism’, he doesn’t believe in wearing symbols on air. Whether it be a poppy or an AIDS ribbon, he wont wear one. I can understand where he’s coming from, but I just think the poppy is something different to all the other badges you can wear. It’s worn in remembrance, it's not a symbol of war or of anything for that matter. It honours those who have died protecting our nation.
I heard someone say the other day that they wont wear a poppy because they won’t fund ‘Blair’s war’. It reminds me of the Celtic match last week where a banner was propped up amongst the fans saying: “Your deeds would shame all the devils in hell. Ireland. Iraq. Afghanistan. No bloodstained poppy on our hoops.”
Some people are so blind. People refusing to wear them because they believe if they do they are promoting wars, whether they’re right or wrong. These people are idiots. You don’t wear a poppy to let everyone know you are pro-war, or that you believe Blair was right to follow Bush into battle. That‘s so ridiculous! It represents the soldiers who’ve been their! The money raised by purchasing a poppy goes straight into supporting these brave men and women (and their families) who live and die in a war zone just so we can live this supposedly hard-life here at home.
And that’s the main thing that annoys me; the short-sightedness of it all. As if we wear a poppy to honour those who are fighting or have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. The poppy represents more than just that. It represents everyone, everyone who has ever fought in a war, whether it be right now in Afghanistan, or back in the First and Second World Wars.
It doesn’t matter when or why we went to war. What matters are these honourable men and women served and still serve our nation and our allies’ for us to live a normal life. Some might not have believed in the war, and they fought regardless. Some were forced to fight, and they fought regardless. Some were even children, and they fought regardless.
Naturally after thinking about all this on a rammed bus in a traffic jam it puts it all in perspective. Yes, this bus idea was the worst decision of the year, but at least I can make these decisions. If it wasn’t for the heroes who’ve fought and died for us I don’t even think I would have that.
